This season concentrated on revealing more of the Iron Age destructions we uncovered in 1991-1992. As you will remember, we have two destructions in G about a century apart. The earlier, Iron I destruction of ca. 1100 B.C.E., was extremely violent; a meter of burned deposit, including destroyed installations and many in situ artefacts, testifies to a big fire, perhaps of human origin. This year, we found the remains of it that had eluded us in 1993, directly to the north and south of the original square. To the south, we discovered a mass of pottery burned and exploded from the inside and crushed by a collapsed roof whose construction (burned timbers, reeds, and all) was wonderfully preserved in the baulk.

We found that the weird installation that had emerged in 1993, was continuous with the little plaster-capped partition and had also been covered by fallen roofing. It turned out to be a large bench, over 3 meters long and a meter wide, covered by plaster that formed two ridges either side of a shallow depression, with a bin on either side. Egyptian and Greek terracottas, together with the grindstones, stone bowls, and other finds around it, make it clear that it should be a bench for kneading bread. Six or eight people could work at it, making it the largest such establishment that any of us knows of in the early Iron-Age Middle East. The room it stands in is at least twice as large as normal in G, and we haven't found its eastern wall yet. This, together with the ovens, must lie under the eastern balk: three years' work at least!

Finally, we worked at clearing the west and east sides of the area. On the west, we found more of the "cult-room," and on the east a change in orientation of the house-walls. Coming down on Cheryl's Famous Floor, she discovered very little pottery (Cheryl's must have been on a series of shelves on the west side of the room), but was rewarded by a fine, intact krater (mixing-bowl), the best of its period found to date at Dor.

Possible bread kneading installation found in Early Iron Age destruction

Room filled with Early Iron Age pots burned and exploded from the inside